The Maxmillion Tournament
by NoLogique
Summary: Or:Vice and Mature are Gonna Make It After All. A new tournament starts and wild hijinx ensues, with lots of mystery, intrigue, action and romance. CHAPTER 11 up!
1. Chapter 1

It was a great joke among the few citizens who lived in the small town of Shady Trees that there weren't any shade or trees to speak of.

For the most part, you had to let the citizens have their little joke, since there wasn't any other good humour to find in the landscape. Shady Trees nestles in the middle of a few good square miles of barren gray fields. Of note was a small roadside bar, down by the highway. Also of note were its lack of customers: only three motorcycles propped themselves up against a lone fire hydrant.

Inside it wasn't much better: old wood floors, wood walls, a couple lamps to give it a good old dusty dark feeling, and a couple tables. The bartender himself wasn't much of a man to speak of either: short, scrawny, old and quiet.

The whole bar was quiet and that was the way K' liked it. Most of all, he liked its in-between nature: the bar was somewhere along a road going from somewhere to somewhere else and K' himself was in-between – not sure where he was going and not sure where he came from.

There was only the modest present: K' on the little creaky stool, sipping his creaky drink, watching the dust swirl. Quiet.

The door slammed open. "K', baby!" Shingo cried. "What's happening? We've been looking all over for you!"

K' flinched, then turned slowly to look at the newcomers. Unhappiness: Flanking Shingo was Kusanagi, the evil Kyo clone, and K9999.

"Don't think this means I won't kill you later on, K'!" K9999 snapped. "This is just a short truce!"

"Truce?" K' asked. "Shingo, what-?"

"Check it out, baby!" Shingo cried, slapping a brochure down on the bar. "The Maxmillion Tournament, happening in Basil Town, USA! Just a four-hour bus ride from here."

K' didn't pick up the brochure. He glanced from Kusanagi to K9999 to Shingo. "Yabuki," he said. "If you don't explain why you're talking to me, I'll-"

"Try anything, punk!" K9999 snapped. "We're ready for you!"

"Hold on," Shingo cried. "Listen, the sponsor of the tournament is Maxmillion Beauregard and he's putting up a prize money of twelve million dollars to the team who wins. The tournament has four to a team, so that's _three million dollars each_!"

"And you want me to join your team, is that it?"

"Yeah!"

"Why me?"

Shingo grinned, then leapt back and landed in the midst of the two others. "Because we'll be the Kyo Team!"

"You're actually putting together a team of Kyo Kusanagi impersonators, are you?"

"Impersonator!" K9999 snapped. "I'm not just a clone like you and that other one there, you know! I'm perfection! I'm what Kyo Kusanagi can only _dream_ of being!"

"Yet he beats you in every tournament."

"Shut up!"

"And you, Kusanagi," K' said, turning his attention to the clone. "What interest do you have in this farce?"

Kusanagi stared at him for a moment, then began to full out laugh. His guttural laughter fell away into giggles, and then Kusanagi fell silent, just looking at K'.

"Uh huh," K' said. "Yabuki, you're out of your mind. Hell, why not get Kyo himself on your Kyo Team?"

"Man," Shingo said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and snorting. "I tried. Honestly, I did. But Kyo's already got the Japan Team back up and running. And I thought Benimaru and Daimon liked me more."

"Uh huh."

K' heard the motor of a powerful sports car roar up into the parking lot outside and he knew his quiet day was no more.

The door opened and all eyes in the bar were drawn to a strange sight in Shady Trees: two gorgeous women in business dresses just didn't happen very often.

"What are _you_ doing here?" K' asked.

"Funny you should ask," Mature replied.

"We've been trying to track you four down all day," Vice said, pulling a chair out and sitting down.

"Thank God for spy satellites," Mature replied. "We're doing the registrations for the Maxmillion Tournament and Yabuki needs to sign up his team."

"Right on!" Shingo cried.

"Wait," K' said. "_You_ guys are on the staff for the tournament? Now I'm really suspicious."

"Aw, baby," Vice mewled. "That's how we want you to be."

"But there's nothing _actually_ there to be suspicious about, K'," Mature replied. "Think about it: We've been involved with clerical duties with a lot of the King of Fighters tournaments, right? So our resume appealed to Maxmillion Beauregard and here we are; registrars and judges."

"This place stinks," Vice said. "I mean, literally. It physically has a stench."

Mature produced a clipboard and a pen. "Yabuki, get your team down on this."

"Right," Shingo said and took it. He glanced at K'. "K', you in?"

K' thought a moment and reflected on how far away from civilization three million dollars could get him. The dark heart of Australia, maybe or Tibet. "I'm in," he said.

"Right on!" Shingo whooped.


	2. Chapter 2

A Note To My Esteemed Readers :

You know, it took me a second to figure out what SuperLegendaryNamek was talking about (I thought he had no worries anyways, since it seems impossible for me to write a KoF with_out_ making it tongue in cheek) until Sanity's Eclipse spoke up.

It's a testament to the sorry (read: _hilarious_) state of when people automatically assume I'm writing a slash fic.

Spoiler : I'm not.

So relax!

And on to the next chapter…!

-------------------------------

The only thing throughout the confusion she could hear was the hissing sound. The fact that this was the only thing she could hear added to the confusion, but at least it was something _tangible_, something she could focus on.

Feelings came next: First of cold – such cold that she thought she was dead (that was it! She was dead! Everything made perfect sense! But if this was the afterlife, then what was that hissing sound?)

Then warmth came, filling her, starting at the tips of her toes and rising all the way to the ends of her hair. That was when she became aware that she still _had_ toes and hair. She had a body. She could move it, but only slightly, like she was strapped in place.

The hissing sounded like hydraulics. The next thing she knew, she felt herself flung outwards, away from the warmth into dry cold. She hit a floor and knelt there, dripping wet.

She still couldn't see anything.

"Open your eyes," a soft voice said.

Oh yeah. It took a second to figure out how to do it, and then she did. She could see hard cement floor, and all around her a cavernous room, lit by six green lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

"Your life signs seem stable," a man was saying, sitting at a stool in front of a monitor and mainframe.

She turned and saw the contraption she had just come out of: a squat metal pod, fluids oozing out of the area she had been in. Wires rappelled themselves back into it and the device, having finished its work, closed and locked itself.

The man at the mainframe was tall and handsome. This was the first thing she noticed.

"Can you remember anything?" he asked, glancing at her.

"Leopold Goenitz," she replied. "I thought you were dead."

"Ah, you remember my name," Goenitz replied. "I am Goenitz, or, at least, I think I am. There's a difference there. Can you remember your own name?"

"Vice," she replied. "I'm Vice. Where's Mature?"

"I've already animated her," Goenitz said. "The Reanimator can only handle one person at a time, so I did her first. What can you remember last before you awoke?"

Vice thought for a moment. She could remember Iori Yagami going crazy and attacking them. Iori had gone for her first and she had executed a move on his legs that would've felled a charging rhino.

Apparently Iori-gone-crazy was a bit stronger than rhinos, because the next thing she knew his nails were in her neck and he had yanked, and suddenly her blood and flesh were all over his hands and everything went dark.

She remembered whispering a name as she fell. She thought she had said, "Mature…" but she couldn't be sure. Everything was fuzzy and jumbled.

"Those memories will probably never come back fully," Goenitz said, taking a small medical flashlight and examining her. "After all, brain damage sets in immediately after death."

"That's right!" Vice snapped. "Yagami _killed_ me. I… I can't remember anything after that."

"It's funny, though," Goenitz said, wrapping a towel around her. "I remember watching the videos the close-circuit cameras got of Yagami murdering you two. When you died, you didn't say 'Mature'. You actually said, 'Goenitz'. I was touched."

"Because we betrayed you, I guess," Vice said. "I don't know – the memories all seem distant, like, I don't know, I read them in a book or something."

"I know exactly what you mean," Goenitz replied, smiling.

"But we betrayed you!" Vice said, letting Goenitz towel her off. "And you cursed us! Aren't you- aren't you angry?"

Goenitz smiled at her and said, "No. Just like you I awoke in the Reanimator. All my memories of the events leading up to my defeat and Iori entering the Riot of Blood are distant, fuzzy, jumbled, just like yours. To be perfectly honest, I don't know if I'm actually Leopold Goenitz reanimated – made alive again – or just a clone of him, with his memories. The Reanimator can do both."

Mature appeared at the far end of the cavern. "Which means," she said. "_We_ don't know if we're clones or actually Vice or Mature, do we?"

"Mature!" Vice cried.

"Hi, darling," Mature said, smiling.

"That is true," Goenitz said, laughing. "You don't know if you're clones or the originals, but, really, does it matter in the end? Would things change for you if you knew you were clones or if you were the originals?"

Vice flew into Mature's arms.

"Don't get too happy, yet," Mature said, holding her partner. "Goenitz still hasn't told us what the catch is."

"There is a catch," Goenitz replied. "Be sure about that. The catch is you work for me now. Again. What I want you to do is return to the living world and set up surveillance on the King of Fighters champions. Can you do that?"

"No sweat," Vice said.

"You'll get a check every week," Goenitz replied. "And you'll just live carrying on this spying job. Easy as pie. Then you'll get a phone call, and your _real_ work will begin. Do we have an agreement?"

"What choice do we have?" Mature asked.

"You can return to death, if you wish," Goenitz said. "Some say you'd be better off there."

"_I_ say you have an agreement," Mature said.

Goenitz grinned. "Excellent," he said.

---

The apartment door opened with a bang and Vice stumbled in, laughing. She tripped along the hardwood floor, kicking off her shoes and collapsed on the couch. "I've been to better parties then _that_, but man, that was entertaining!" she cried. "Did you see when Angel kissed Mary? The look on Mary's _face_? Priceless!"

"Poor Yagami," Mature said, closing the door behind her and walking across the floor towards the phone. "Imagine having your hotel burn down? That can't be fun."

"Hey, _shoes_!" Vice exclaimed. "You're gonna scuff up the floor!"

"C'est la vie," Mature said, checking the phone for messages. "We need a better social life, Vice. We have no messages. No boys are calling us."

"Girl's night tonight down at the Pantaloon strip club," Vice offered. "Saw the ads for it on the way home."

"Don't feel much like going out tonight. I better do the voyeur thing and log it."

"Always the workaholic, aren't you?"

Mature stepped across the kitchen and opened the far door. The apartment was three rooms, and this was the third, smaller one. Though the lights were off, a crystalline iridescence hit Mature's eyes as she stepped in and stared at the monitors hooked up. Thirteen cameras down and thirty-six audio bugs slipped into the various homesteads of the KoF champions. The one set in Iori Yagami's hotel showed only static, and Mature bent over to flick it off.

The phone rang.

"Hope it's someone sexy!" Vice called from the other room.

"Doubtful," Mature replied, answering the phone. "Vice and Mature's residence."

"_Hello there._"

Mature sucked in her breath. "Goenitz."

"_How've you been_?"

"Don't tell you want a date," Mature said, smiling. "We haven't seen you in a year now. And what a date that was. Bringing us back to life? Man, we'll have to do that again sometime."

"_The time has come, girls_."

"Has it now?"

"_Do you have a copy of today's newspaper_?"

"Out in the kitchen."

"_Pick it up_."

"Hold on. Okay, got it. What am I looking for?"

"_Page three. Bottom right._"

"'Multi-billionaire Maxmillion Beauregard to sponsor an international fighting tournament'. You don't want us to compete, do you?"

"_Not at all, my dears, though no doubt you'd fair very well. No, in five minutes you'll receive a call from Maxmillion Beauregard's secretary. She will tell you that Beauregard has looked over your resumes and wishes to hire you to be the registrar and judges for the tournament. You'll accept_."

"May I ask to what end?"

"_All in good time, my dears. The bishop never tells its pawns entirely what its moves are going to be – just enough to let it out of its square._"

"If you're the bishop, dear, who's the king?"

"_More like queen_. _But never mind that. Good luck, darlings._"

"Goenitz, wait-"

The line went dead.

She bit her lip and hung up and stared at the phone.

"Mature?" Vice called, from the other room. "Who was that?"

"Goenitz."

"Goenitz! It's about damn time! What did he want?"

The phone rang again.

"Hello?" Mature asked, answering it.

"Hello, my name is Peggy Kitase, secretary for Maxmillion Beauregard…"

---

"You're not angry, are you?" Joe asked, concerned (though trying not to look it).

Terry Bogard's fist hit the punching bag and careened through it, in an airborne mess of powder, air and cotton.

"No," he said. "I'm not angry. Just – you know, I thought we could be a team again. Also, I don't see how you're even going to _win_ going on your own anyways."

Joe smiled and looked across the sunny patio, past Terry's training equipment and over at Rock Howard, who was having trouble putting birdseed into their birdfeeders. "It's twelve _million_ dollars, Terry," Joe said. "A guy like me could retire on that."

Terry laughed and picked up the pieces of the punching bag. "You're not going to get that far, Joe," he replied. "The Maxmillion teams have four people. One against four, you're gonna get your ass handed to you."

Joe smirked. "No way, man! Have you _seen_ me kick! There's no way I'm going down. 'Sides, I've been working on this awesome new move! Want to see it?"

"So long as you don't break anything," Terry replied, dumping the punching bag in the garbage.

"Oh. Never mind then."

Terry vaulted up onto his pommel horse. "To tell the truth, pal," he said, pushing himself up into a handstand. "I've been having trouble coming up with a team too."

"No way!" Joe cried. "Get Andy and Tizoc! Maybe convince the Duck King to help you out."

"No can do. Tizoc's out of the country and off doing something on his own," Terry replied, balancing on one hand. "And Andy – well, the guy's doing his best to be pussy-whipped these days."

"What's that mean?"

"Remember when Iori Yagami's hotel burnt down?"

"No."

"But you know it happened, right?"

"I guess."

"Well, Iori moved in with King in the _Illusion_ and the two of them decided to go into business together and make the _Illusion_ into a bar and inn. Added a whole other floor to the place. You should see it some time."

"I should care about this – why, exactly?"

"Because Yagami and King have registered in the Maxmillion Tournament under the Hotel Team and Mai's along for the ride."

"So Andy's-?"

"Yep. Trying to do the couple thing."

"Jesus, man," Joe said, looking away. "That's a damn shame. Never thought Andy'd get tied down to a dame."

"Heh," Terry said, switching hands. "It's not so bad."

"Whoa there, pal," Joe said. "Don't be thinking Joe Higashi's flying solo, here. I date Lilly, if you recall, but when she says Jump, I don't say How high, get my drift?"

"Sure, Joe," Terry replied, laughing, and pushed off, landing spread-eagle on the ground and going straight into push-ups. "So right now I don't really have a team.'

"Start calling around," Joe said. "I'm sure you'll find some people."

The back gate opened and Mary appeared on the patio, taking care to avoid Rock's frustrated anger at the bird feeder. "Terry, I wanted to- Oh, hi, Joe!"

"Hey, Mary," Joe said, grinning. "I heard you kissed Angel."

"Correction, shit-head," Mary replied, shoving Joe back. "She kissed _me_. Men. Seriously, two women lock lips and you all go goofy on us."

Terry stood up and tossed a towel over his shoulder. He paused to kiss Mary and say, "We still on tonight for the movie, babe?"

"Damn straight," Mary replied. "But I came over to talk to you about the Maxmillion Tournament. You don't have a team yet, do you?"

"Not yet," Terry said. "Why do you ask?"

For some reasons, warning bells were going off in his head, but he ignored them. When Malin ran through the gate door and started to shout at Mary about a kitten that May Lee and she had just seen, he knew the bells were justified.

"Mary, why is Malin in my backyard?" he asked, glancing from Mary to Joe.

When May Lee stepped through the gate, everything came together. "Oh no," he said.

"We're still trying to decide on a team name," Mary said.

"I want to call it the Neo Hero Team," May Lee said, folding her arms. "The Japan Team were the first Hero Team, sure, and then that Ash Crimson fellow showed up with his New Hero Team. But we're all _actually_ heroes, so I think our name should reflect that."

"Oh God," Terry said.

"_Lame_," Malin said. "Who wants some stuffy minimalist name anyways? We need something like Super Chibi Legendary Fury Team or something cool like that!"

"Oh God," Terry repeated.

"Terry, you okay with this?" Mary asked. "I just thought it'd be nice to fight on the same team for once, you know? Instead of always duking it out with each other. I mean, that's _awesome_ that we can do that and still be together, but I'd like to be on the same side once in a while."

"Oh God," Terry said. "Well, can… can we at least not me the Super Chibi whatever-?"

Joe made a whipping sound. Terry picked up the pommel horse and threw it at him.

"The Blue Team, maybe," May Lee said. "Then we could all wear the same colours."

"Maybe have a little dance we could all do before every fight!" Malin added.

"Well, better decide soon," Vice said, leaning over the fence. "You've got to register soon."

"Terry?" Mary asked. "You in? Please? Think of what we can do with the money together, huh?"

Terry's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, I'm in."

"Tremendous," Vice said, pulling out a pen and a clipboard. "What team name should I put you down under?"

"The Super Chibi Legendary Kawaii Fury Neo-Hero Blue Team!" Malin exclaimed.

"Wow, it's like something we can all agree on," May Lee said.

"Oh God," Terry groaned. "Oh God."


	3. Chapter 3

There was a real attraction for KoF champions in the Maxmillion Tournament. The foremost of all was the fact that it was so simple: teams of four compete against each other in tests of martial artist skill for the prize of twelve million dollars. Simple. Easy. No one had any ulterior motives for entering the tournament; Mary didn't want to investigate any murders, there were no Orochi demons for Kyo and Iori to fight, no one's master needed avenging. Simple, clean and fun. At least for most of the teams, of course.

The second attraction was Maxmillion Beauregard himself, or mainly his visibility. He was a philanthropist who loved the limelight, and every third paper or so featured his picture: a small, demure little man with a honker of a nose and a big bushy walrus mustache. He wasn't a mysterious sponsor hiding out in his airship awaiting the final fight; he simply wanted to put on a good show.

This is precisely the reason why so many teams showed up at the Romaine Hotel on time, with smiles on more than most of them, and the sheer number of them kept Vice and Mature busy at the registrar.

"I think this four-on-four business is nonsense," Takuma Sakazaki muttered, bending over the desk to sign the registrar's paper under the **Art of Fighting **team. "Three is a good sensible number. You know where you stand with three. Say, for instance, you have forty-four fighters – a good sized tournament – well, that only nabs you eleven teams! Three, however, _well_: that can get you upwards to _fourteen_ teams, give or take."

"Point well taken," Mature replied, smiling as she stood behind the desk. "We'll mention it to Mister Beauregard."

Vice peered out at the crowd that filled the lobby of the Romaine Hotel. It was a large lobby, with a wide sloping circular roof (painted with depictions of farmers tilling the land in an Arcadian country) and large windows set into the walls. Nevertheless, the lobby was filled up with buff warriors hankering for a chance at the prize money. Beyond Takuma, Ryu, Yuri and Robert Garcia, Vice could spy a ton of familiar faces: Angel, Kyo Kusanagi and Sie Kensou, among others.

She mostly noticed the tall, wide-shouldered man with the Mohawk and dark skin dressed in the sharp suit. "Seth," she muttered. She tried to catch his eye and look coy, but no luck: he never looked her way, and disappeared into the crowd.

"Excuse me," Mature said to Takuma and stood up on the desk. Looking over the sea of heads, she shouted, "Will all the teams who've _already_ signed up please stand clear and let the team who haven't through, please?"

There was a lot of grumbling and moving around, none of which seemed to help the problem.

Takuma and the others moved to the side, and Mature found herself staring at the boyishly good looking Vanessa.

"Where's that sheet?" Vanessa asked. "Hey, aren't you two _dead_?"

"What's with the attitude, darling?" Mature asked, smiling, and handing the registrar sheet over. "You always look like your dog just got ran over with a truck."

"I don't _want_ to be here," Vanessa replied. "NESTS is gone, so I don't see why I should fight anymore."

"Twelve millions smackers, that's why," Vice interjected.

"I'm surrounded by so many pigs," Vanessa replied.

"You're tall, beautiful and you purposely show midriff and shoulders, babe," Mature said. "How are you in good conscience spurning male attention?"

"I wear this because it's easier to fight in," Vanessa snapped.

"Oh sure," Vice said, her thick lips pulling back into a smile. "And the whole tie schoolgirl fetish thing isn't on purpose at _all_, right?"

"I'm surrounded by immaturity," Vanessa said, and signed the sheet. "We're in as the **Agents** team again. Don't forget the name."

"God that woman needs sex," Vice said, watching Vanessa move away. "Like I always say, Mature, the vagina is like a freezer: if you don't open it up every once and while-"

"-ice grows, yes," Mature sighed. "I don't think we _really_ need your hare-brained, borderline misogynistic opinions right now, Vice. Just because you have _no _problem with promiscuity doesn't mean-"

"Sign me up, bitches!" Angel snapped, slamming her fists into the counter. "Funny you two should mention promiscuity: half the reason I _come_ to these tournaments is for all the cheesecake. Gorgeous men, gorgeous women, and all in an occupation where they get all active and sweaty and the endorphins start flowing. I'd feel like a sexual predator if it weren't so damn _easy_."

"Glad to have you back, Angel," Vice said, handing over the sheet. "What unfortunate souls did you nab for your team this time?"

"Darling, nabbing a team weren't so hard as they say," Angel replied. "I got me Maxima, Whip and some little woman named Foxy. Check it."

"_Foxy_!" Mature exclaimed. "Sorry, Angel, but you're pushing the boundaries of believability here. Why would Foxy, _if_ she were still alive, be pissing around at a two-bit tournament like this?"

"Revenge, darlings. Between you me, I have to watch out for poor little K-Four-Nine, else Foxy'll kill him. She's _mainly_ after K', but I know she's got that little hard-on for the idea of killing K-Four-Nine, so I gotta keep her close. We're **Nests Resurrection **team, babies! I'm off!"

Mature glanced at Angel's signature on the registrar sheet as the woman bounced away. "This could get messy," she said. "Have we seen if Kula's here yet?"

"Messy?" Vice asked. "You mean entertaining as all get out. It's good to have Angel back in the biz, though. I never know what to think of her. The twelve year old high school girl in me keeps wanting to get all catty and call her a slut."

"I don't know," Mature said, smiling. "There's something so endearing about a scantily-clad, sexually aggressive bad ass these days."

"Nice tits, anyways. A bit too large for my taste."

"You're a _shining_ example of eloquence, Vice."

"You're too kind."

Mature looked at the crowd and snapped, "_Next_!"


	4. Chapter 4

To My Esteemed Readers:

Twilight Aoi – I love your idea for the team. It took me a couple days how to work it into the story, but I think I have it now. They'll appear in the next, or the next-after-next. As for the Vice-and-Mature-sleeping-together thing, I don't know. I thought that too, but I'm getting a serious hetero, or at least, bi, vibe off of them.

Tyrant v. Beta and LSN – I hope you'll like what I do too.

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The arenas themselves were to be held at several spots picked out by Maxmillion Beauregard himself. Three teams were to fight per day, to get a much hubbub about each fight as possible (sponsors _loved_ that). It also helped to make seeding the tournament easier, since a preliminary match could be held, a winner-on-winner could be held and a loser-on-loser could be held. Losing the preliminary match was not a major problem – being seeded in the loser-on-losers wasn't a total loss. There was a secondary prize of ten thousand dollars to the winning team of that seed, after all.

The first preliminary matches of the day were held in the Artisan Arena, a mold-and-plaster remake of the Rome coliseum (though considerably smaller), and, as Maxmillion Beauregard's PR agents wanted, the seats were filled.

If Mature squinted from her judge's seat, she could see the various fan clubs waving banners in the seats. Down in seating section D, to the left of her, she could see a waving banners reading "**Ryo Sakazaki is our man!**" and "**Ryo rulz, Kyo drulz**!". In section G, over to the right and down farther near the sandy floor of the arena, signs were held up declaring, "**Terry is a fairy!**" in contrast to those in section C holding signs crying "**Go Hungry Wolf**!" Even stranger were the banners reading "**LUV U DUCK KING!**" when he hadn't even signed up for the tournament.

Above the judge's booth was the royal balcony, where little Maxmillion Beauregard sat, looking very content, his little legs peeping out from beneath his coat and shaking a little.

On the four corners of the coliseum were the video screens, right now cutting between shots of the crowd and several numbers counting down. The announcer's voice boomed from the megaphones, "The next match will begin in four minutes!"

The last match had been duly spectacular. The **Art of Fighting **team had gone up against the **Psycho Soldiers** and more or less got each other's shit ruined. Vice's favourite part had been when Robert Garcia drove Sie Kensou's own leg into his own head, but the match had had a lot of great moments.

"I could get used to this," Vice said, leaning forwards and sticking her head out beyond the booth to get the most of the sunlight's heat. "Not having to fight is pretty lovely. We're waited on hand and feet."

"Plenty of paperwork, though," Mature said, marking on papers. "The **Art of Fighting** won the last one, so they get seeded higher than the **Psycho Soldiers**, who get bumped into the loser track."

"Kusanagi brought his girlfriend with him this time, I hear," Vice replied.

"She's fighting?"

"No, no. She's just, you know, _with_ him. We finally get to meet her, though. Can't wait to see what personality can stand Kyo Kusanagi long enough to have a relationship with him."

Vice stuck a cigarette into her cigarette holder and lit the end. As she took a drag, she noticed the **Agents** team standing at the highest seats on the coliseum, watching. Seth stood looming over the view in his dark suit and fedora. There was something sinister about the way he watched…

"That man's up to something," she muttered.

"Talking to yourself again, dear?" Mature asked.

"Always. Hey, speaking of which, where's the **Hotel **team? I haven't seen Yagami or the others at all yet."

"They phoned ahead to say they'd be a bit late, I guess."

The announcer roared, startling them : "And _now_, the moment you've _all_ been waiting for! The _second_ match of the _MAXMILLION TOURNAMENT_! Are you ready to see some _action_!"

The crowd went wild, surging forward against the seats ahead of them.

"Let me introduce to you, the two teams that will go _wild_ on each other and _tear each other to shreds_: On the north side, emerging from the Entrance A, we have the **Kyo **team!"

Shingo emerged first, leaping out into the sand excitedly and doing a handless front flip that sent the crowd hollering and cheering. K9999 walked out with a small creepy smile on his face, like he was secretly planning on destroying the arena with his mind. Kusanagi sauntered out, grinning like he'd just pulled the legs off a puppy. There was a pause, while Shingo jumped around, bellowing at the crowd and the crowd bellowing support back at Shingo, and then a small voice said, "Aw, nuts."

A thoroughly embarrassed K' walked out, marching across the soft sand and staring up at the blue sky and sunlight above him. The crowd cheered at him and he managed to pick up a large banner somewhere in section (oh, geez, he thought) K, reading "**Keep Kicking Keister, K'!**" A bunch of screaming girls were holding it.

"For the love of-" he muttered.

"And on the south side," the announcer shouted. "emerging from Entrance B, we have the **New New Faces **team!"

An eclectic group walked in formation out of the other entrance, amidst heightened screams of support. The speakers started blaring "Smoke on the Water".

Although Yashiro Nanakase was registered as the leader of the **New New Faces** team, he walked on the side of the formation, while secondary group member Ash Crimson smiled and walked along in the center. This was by no means a purposeful thing: it simply happened, as the sheer amount of charisma Ash exuded created a gravitational force which drew his other members around him, not the other way around. The original New Faces team was known for its young, gorgeous, metrosexual team members, and Ash Crimson didn't disappoint. Neither did its other new additions.

Adelaide Bernstein ran a comb through his perfect blonde hair, and Shen Woo got ready to kick some ass.

"Hugs and kisses, Shingo?" Ash said, smiling.

"Let's make this quick," Adelaide muttered.

"All _right_!" Yashiro cried, leaping onto both hands and springing back up onto his legs.

"Yashiro!" Shingo cried. "A-aren't you one of the sacred kings of the earth? D- didn't Kyo and Iori fight you in some epic climactic battle? Didn't you disappear or _die_ or something?"

"Missing persons come back, bud," Yashiro said. "Let's get this is on like Flin Flan."

"Ready, everyone?" the announcer cried. "_FIGHT_!"

And the fight was on.

Yashiro lunged first, beetling across the sandy plain towards K9999.

"Let's _do_ this!" K9999 cried, and sent out a psychic blast. It cut through the sand and into Yashiro, enveloping him in a tempest of sand and swirls of energy.

Yashiro burst through the maelstrom and drove his foot into K9999's face, driving the little man into the ground. Yashiro bucked forward, caught himself with his hand and vaulted towards K'.

K' brought his hands out of his pockets for the first time since the match began, and drove his gauntleted fist into Yashiro's chest. The rule of opposite and equal reactions didn't apply to K': Yashiro flew pretty much halfway across the stadium floor, while K' stood there.

Shen Woo and Adelaide leapt up Shingo. Shingo skidded back, dodging and weaving. He screamed at the stationary Kusanagi, "What the hell are you doing? _Help_!"

Kusanagi grinned toothy fangs at him and sadistically enjoyed the way Adelaide and Shen Woo struck Shingo in the chest at the same time.

Then Ash Crimson was on him, knocking his feet out from under him and lighting him on fire as easily as if he were covered in gasoline.

While Ash's eyes glittered, Kusanagi screeched and rolled around, trying to put out the emerald fire.

Ash took some time from watching Kusanagi's agony to see Shingo manage to plunge his foot into Shen Woo's midriff. As Shen Woo doubled over, Shingo leapt over him and managed to get at least one blow on Adelaide, who took in the face like a pro.

Adelaide let Shingo get another punch in on him, this time to his shoulder, and then he got Shingo three times: a standard kick to the legs, a roundhouse to the jaw and a vertical chop that sent Shingo spinning in the air and bleeding.

"That kid packs a punch," Shen Woo said, still doubled over. "He ain't bad, eh, Bernstein?"

"Don't talk to me during conflicts," Adelaide muttered.

Yashiro ran past him, sprinting across the sand towards K9999. Giving K9999's psychic talents, Yashiro wished he had something more long-range, like a gun or some sort of souped-up laser cannon.

K9999 took a step towards him and sent out another psychic blast. The energy smote the earth and a wave of sand ripped upwards, knocking Yashiro's feet out from under him.

No matter: Yashiro hit the ground with his hands and sprang from the flip feet-first into K9999's neck, again plunging the killing machine into the sand.

"How'd you like that, huh?" Yashiro asked, kneeling down on the little man.

K9999 grabbed Yashiro's face and headbutted him as hard as he could.

"My nose!" Yashiro screamed, holding his face, blood running out from between his fingers. "My face! My beautiful face! I was chiseled perfection, you bastard! You've _ruined my face_!"

K9999 stood up slowly, blood running down his own nose. "Shut up," he said and warped his arm. It was a disgusting sight, really, almost horrifying: all that flesh and bone mangling into itself to form a sharp pointed weapon, which K9999 drove into Yashiro's chest.

Yashiro doubled over, holding the wound in his stomach, and collapsed. That was that for Yashiro.

"Hah!" K9999 screamed at him. "I told you! I can handle myself!"

It was a long jump, maybe forty feet or more, but Adelaide made it and kicked K9999 up into the air.

_This_ shit was why people fought to attend tournaments featuring KoF champions: K9999 flew up maybe twenty feet into the air, and Adelaide jumped after him and kicked him again. K9999 went up another twenty feet. Opposite and equal reactions _did_ work on Adelaide: he fell down to his feet. But he jumped again, and made it back up the K9999 before the little killing machine could start his descent. Adelaide managed to get in thirteen or fourteen rapid-fire kicks into K9999 this time, and the crowd gasped and cried as K9999 became a rag-doll form that tumbled and flew over their heads and finally crashed into the judge's booth.

The crowd went wild.

Vice and Mature turned and looked behind them for where K9999's limp form lay bloody and twisted behind them.

"They're in good form this year," Mature said.

"I think some of his blood got on my dress when he flew past," Vice muttered.

The crowd was mostly standing on their feet now, some of them chanting Adelaide's name.

Adelaide turned to face K', hands up in a standard combat stance. K' just kind've stood there, hands in his pockets, watching Adelaide.

He took his right hand out of his pocket and stuck a toothpick in his mouth. As he chewed on it, he watched Kusanagi and Shingo fight the other two.

Kusanagi was, when he wanted to be, a stunning fighter. This was, of course, because of several reasons:

First) His endurance levels were through the roof. Normal humans could only take so much pain before they collapsed into unconsciousness. K' thought that Kusanagi could probably survive a clip of bullets emptied into him, judging how long he usually lasted in fights.

Second) K' had made a study of how the real Kyo Kusanagi fought: whenever Kyo used any of his abilities with fire, there was always a split-second of hesitation before it happened, as if Kyo had to marshal his abilities before performing them. K' knew this from experience: there _was_ a split-second from between his cognitive decision to shoot fire, and when the fire burst out.

The cloned Kusanagi, however, had no such split-second. He could fire off a flaming blast, and then _immediately_ afterwards execute a second, harder-to-perform move. Almost instantaneously.

This made the fight against Shen Woo and Ash a little one-sided, especially with Shingo's help, whose skill was nothing to sneeze at.

Shingo and Kusanagi worked more or less in tandem: Shingo got a kick into Shen Woo and vaulted off him backwards. As he did this, Kusanagi slid underneath and got off three of those impossibly fast fire attacks.

K' couldn't watch this for long, as Adelaide leapt for him.

_Piss off_, K' thought, as he kicked Adelaide down into the ground.

Adelaide Bernstein was always way too into fighting: he sprang immediately back up and began to scissor kick towards him. Scissor kick, scissor kick, and scissor kick. It was a fair description to call him a whirlwind of the move.

K' went off the ground and zizzed across the stadium into Adelaide. He got his knee into Adelaide's throat and smashed the man into the ground. He shot fire, a rippling inferno crashing into Adelaide's pretty face and scorching that perfect blonde hair.

_Coup de gras_, K' thought, and brought down his gauntlet into Adelaide's face.

Reason One Why K' Didn't Like Fighting In Tournaments: the way the ads advertising the tournament always made the violence seem to be nothing, almost cartoonish. Yet here was the real fight, with Adelaide's teeth caving in underneath K''s gauntlet, and cartilage and bone coming apart.

K' left Adelaide's broken form on the ground and turned to see Shingo and Kusanagi deliver a combo to Shen Woo that sent the man sprawling and unconscious across the arena.

"Yes!" Shingo cried, giving K' a thumb's up. "The Kyo team has the _best_ team members!"

Ash Crimson glanced at his teammates left strewn across the ground. Casually, he reached into his pocket and drew out a cigarette. He stuck it between his lips and lit it with his finger. He took a drag and blew it out, at the three members of the Kyo team. "I am in trouble, non?" he asked.

Kusanagi leapt at him.

Ash ducked his swings, let him run by, then ignited a ball of green fire and sent it at him.

Kusanagi ceased his momentum and turned in time to get smoked by the fireball. He cried out guttural growls, trying to swing his hands at the horrible heat around him, and on him. He managed to put out enough of the fire to see Ash's foot connect with his face. The clone stumbled back into one of the colliseum's supporting pillars.

"My, my, you are strong," Ash said, watching Kusanagi get back up.

K' and Shingo leapt at him.

Ash ducked K''s swing and managed to kick him back long enough to deal with Shingo. Shingo was a mean fighter, executing most of Kyo's trademark moves with accuracy. Ash began to sweat, trying to back away. Shingo executed a move that Ash knew was going to send fire at him. He skidded back, and when he realized that no fire was going to burst from Shingo's arms, he reached forwards, grabbed Shingo and threw him into the arena walls.

Colliding with large plaster walls is never a fun experience: Shingo hit, fell, and tried to come to grips with the fact that his head felt like it was been cleaved in two. Certainly his brains and pieces of his skull were spilling over the ground. He could, with ease, reach up and feel his hair and see. But, you know, that was so hard to do. It'd be so much easier to simply fall asleep. After all, he could have some nice dreams, falling asleep… Yeah…

The fight between Ash, K' and what was left of Kusanagi managed to give the crowd more of what they wanted: Kusanagi pulled more impossibly fast, yet extremely complicated moves off, and K' was at his top, ducking Ash's kicks and trying to land his own.

Ash was probably the most impressive of the three, dodging and ducking and leaping over his opponent's attacks. He managed to knock K' back a few feet and then drove his attention to Kusanagi.

He played with Kusanagi's rage, taunting him and skidding back towards the pillars, where Ash could use them for cover among Kusanagi's outrageous ability to shoot flame.

He was getting tired, and as a result, Kusanagi landed a punch with sent him spinning back into a pillar. Ash landed, and watched Kusanagi charge up towards him.

"Ze architects were lazy," he said. "Drywall and plaster, what were zey zinking?"

A spectacle: Ash's roundhouse: his leg driving _through_ the pillar in a storm of white power and plaster.

Half of Section G, complete with screaming tourists, came down onto Kusanagi.

Ash got to his feet some yards away and surveyed his handiwork. "Atrocious workmanship," he said. "You would agree, K'?"

K' was already coming at him. His gauntlet ready, K' leapt across the expanse between them and swung his gauntlet down. _Coup de gras_, he thought.

Except, Ash's face wasn't being destroyed underneath his mighty strength. His nose wasn't exploding in a mass of blood and tissue, and his eyes weren't bulging out from their sockets as the sheer amount of pain rocked his brain.

Instead, K's gauntlet crashed into the sandy ground.

_No_, K' thought, whirling.

He saw a crimson blur in the air above him, and suddenly everything was heat and emerald.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" the announcer screamed, almost on the verge of a breakdown. "Never in my career have I seen such a fight! The victors are… the **New New Faces **team!"

"Heh," Ash muttered, brushing dust off his coat. "C'est ca."

He caught one of the roses that sailed down from the crowd, and stuck it in his pocket. "C'est ca," he said, again, mostly to himself.


	5. Chapter 5

The four top leading insurance companies in the country were most likely laughing their asses off at Benoven Incorporated for drawing up policies for Maxmillion Beauregard.

The worst of it, of course, was the health insurance – fighting tournaments got people injured and when people are injured, they tend to sue. Though no one had been killed, the tourists sitting in the half of Section H that went crumbling to nothing had all been injured in some form or another and that made a large bunch of lawyers happy. Maxmillion Beauregard paid it no mind – he had somehow managed to get legal insurance off of Benoven. They sure were red in the face now, though.

Most of all, though, it was the fighters getting injured. Beauregard had to set up a fully equipped medical tent and had to hire fully certified doctors and nurses. He had expected this to cost a lot and he had expected that the tent would be more or less full since the tournament began. No matter: every fighter signed on the registrar were covered under the criminally brilliant policy Beauregard's lawyers had managed to weasel into existence. Yes, Benoven Incorporated were definitely red in the face.

Already, the tents had been seeing some action. After the three fights of the day, nearly every participant had to get patched up in some way or another. Though usually, as with the case of Ryo Sakazaki or Robert Garcia, they were diagnosed with something relatively small like a cracked rib or pulled muscle. No problem for guys like them.

Still, though, sometimes they got some more serious injuries; like Sie Kensou's broken leg, Adelaide's two missing and three broken teeth, and Yashiro's chest wound. Some were seriously injured, like K9999, who already had Angel sitting beside his bed, waiting for him to wake up and see how many bandages and casts he had on him.

Others, of course, got off fairly well. K' got some serious burns that seemed to vanish as quickly as he got them. And then there was Shingo, who got sent out with a bandage on his head and a minor concussion.

This last one was added to the list of reasons Yuki didn't approve of fighting. Here was poor Shingo Yabuki fresh out of his first match in the Goddamn thing with actual brain damage.

"I can't believe we lost," Shingo said to her, shoving his hands in his pocket. "I can't believe I can't remember any of it."

It was eclectic bunch collected there. They were standing on the walkway surrounding the top of the stadium. It was a wide walkway scattered with a sandy base and flanked all the way around by drywall and plaster pillars. Though the pillars were painted to look like genuine marble, a simple touch betrayed their shoddier nature. It was fake, like everything else Yuki had come across here.

She stood beside Kyo Kusanagi and looked at him and wondered if his first fight would land him with worse brain damage. It was a startling sight: Kyo being brought to her in a wheelchair, his head knocked open, and a trail of drool sliding down his cheek.

"_There was nothing we could do_," the doctor would say. "_His opponent punched him so hard in the face that his brain melted. All he can do is drool and be an expensive dependent for the rest of his and your life. Hey, isn't your sexual peak in a few years? Oh, your biological clock is ticking too? Well, good luck_."

Beside her, Benimaru Nikaido laughed heartily and shoved Shingo playfully, making fun of him for being beaten by that 'poof' Ash Crimson.

Ash Crimson. Yuki could feel Kyo visibly stiffen at the name. She almost laughed. She had met this Ash Crimson before; this supposed malevolent nemesis of her boyfriend (the other one, she thought). Instead of the evil sadist she had expected to find, she instead had come face to face with a flamboyant (if not downright affected) metrosexual young man with a taste for jumpsuits. She had been properly afraid of Iori Yagami - at least she had been ten years ago, when it seemed as if he'd actually make good on his promise to kill Kyo. This Ash Crimson certainly had a touch of the malevolent, but hardly seemed able to challenge her boyfriend, who had the habit of destroying demonic demigods.

Apparently Ash wanted to steal Kyo's flames. To be honest, Yuki was rather ambivalent about this: she imagined a relationship with Kyo where he wasn't a super powered anti-hero constantly petitioned to save the world. It had been a nice fantasy.

One good thing about this tournament, though, was it was a chance to spend some actual time with Kyo. Every year he'd pack up and head off to this tournament due to some world-threatening (or at least city-threatening or, hell, Kyo-threatening) evil that he had to fight. Well, _this_ tournament was just for fun, and it provided them with a beautiful place to spend some time together in between his fights.

And it _was_ a beautiful place: the Avalon Compound used to be a national park until Maxmillion Beauregard bought up sixty square acres of it and built his hotel. Beyond the fakey stadium was less-fakey beauty: walkways paved along grassy hills and trees. A lake.

And the hotel _was_ lovely. Still, she still sometimes felt a little out of place among Shingo, Benimaru and Athena. They were _Kyo's_ friends, after all, and even after nearly a decade of knowing them, she still couldn't shake off the feeling that they were _his_ friends, and not hers.

"Vice! Mature!" Shingo said, turning to the lovely newcomers. "Didja see our fight? Was it _awful_? How badly was I beaten?"

"Amusingly bad," Mature replied. "Let's leave it at that."

"We're heading around to see whose heading to the Couple's Games," Vice said. "You'd think if Maxmillion Beauregard sets up a bunch of activities for people to do after fights, there'd be more participants. Most everyone wants to just go relax in the hotel though."

"_We're_ heading to the Couple's Games," Yuki said.

Mature regarded her for a moment and glanced from her to Kyo. "_You're_ Yuki? The mysterious girlfriend of the famed Kyo Kusanagi? The Kushinada?"

Vice bent over and stared at her. After a while of this wide-eyed scrutiny, Yuki began to feel uncomfortable.

"You're not at all how I expected you to be," Vice said.

"Come on, girls," Kyo said. "Piss off."

"What do you mean exactly?" Yuki asked.

"Well," Vice said. "You're so… so _average_."

Yuki was a little taken aback by that. "Well, _thank you very much_," she replied.

"No, no," Vice said. "You're really pretty, but, I mean, you're so… _normal_."

"Short cropped dark hair," Mature said. "Maroon sweater and jeans. Slender looking build, pretty but not elaborate. Late twenties. Yep, I'm confused."

"_Guys_," Kyo hissed. "What the hell are you doing?"

"No, we're just, you know, kind've proud," Vice said. "She's such a healthy normal girl. We were expecting the stereotypical Japanese love interest: beautiful, demure, insecure, sexually unaggressive to the point of being ludicrous."

"Never quite understood what all those mostly-male Japanese writers and artists saw in those kind of women," Mature muttered. "They're almost like anti-sexy."

Yuki smiled. "Well," she said. "I'm not _exactly_ thirteen years old anymore. But I guess I should take it as a compliment that two gorgeous older women are saying I'm attractive, even if it _is_ in a slightly roundabout way."

"_Older_?" Vice cried, indignant. "Yuki, we're only, what, three, four years older than you? That hardly demands the adjective _older_."

Yuki smiled.

"So you're heading to the Couples' Games together?" Mature asked.

"I don't really want to," Kyo growled.

"Aw, c'mon Kusanagi," Yuki hissed. "We're trying to make this work, remember? It's gotta be give-and-take. Besides, it'll be fun and we _never_ spend any time together."

"Three-legged race is going to be _awesome_," Benimaru said, grinning.

"Why aren't you two going to the Couples' Games?" Athena asked. "I mean, it's not like you two are _married_, but-"

Mature blinked. "I beg your pardon?" she asked.

Vice eyed Athena strangely and said, "What?"

"I mean," Athena said, flustered. "I've always thought you two are such a beautiful couple together! I mean- I mean, what you two_ went_ through, and you're still together. It's wonderful, really! I sometimes thing Iori Yagami and I will never end up together, but then I think of you two and I feel-"

Mature pinched the bridge of her nose. "Uh, Athena-" she said.

Vice looked incredibly amused. She kept looking around at the others. "Do- do we _honestly_ come off as gay?" she asked. "That's hilarious."

"We're not, um, we're not lovers," Mature said.

Athena blushed, then leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, "Is it a spat, then?"

"Is it the short hair?" Vice asked. "Because I thought I always offset that with the make-up and the dress and the cleavage."

"Not to mention the gigantic amount of penis your crotch consumes per annum," Mature muttered. "But, Jesus, Athena, what the hell gave you the impression that we were anything but friends and professional partners?"

"Well," Athena said. "You're always together, you know, and you guys live together and, well, you know-"

Mature narrowed her eyes and said, "Kid, if you think every person of the same gender who lives together is gay, college must seemsuch a gigantic bastionof homosexuality."

"Now, hold on here," Yuki said. "Let me just argue for Athena here a little, because she might not be a _complete_ idiot."

Athena flushed.

"Consider," Yuki continued. "that the usual average response to encountering a man and a woman who are living together is to think that they're sleeping together, regardless of the truth. It's just a reaction: man and a woman – you think they're sleeping together. So maybe that fact that she thought you two living together was a sign of your being lovers stems from how she just thought you two were _lesbians_, regardless of where you lived. Such a hypothesis would be entirely reasonable."

"So I _do_ come off as gay?" Vice asked.

"Wait," Mature said. "That was a fine argument, Yuki, but allow me to riposte. Athena only believe we were lesbians _because_ we were living together, as that was how we were when she came to know of our existence, right? So she thinks we're lovers because we're living together because she thinks we're lesbians, but she thinks we're lesbians because we're living together."

"Touche," Yuki said. "You are a complete idiot, Athena."

"What?" Athena asked.

"We're leaving," Kyo said. "Come on. No more friggin' arguments, _please_."

"Well, skedaddle soon," Vice said. "The stadium's going to be closed in ten minutes. Have fun, lovebirds. See you, Athena, you _freak_."

Vice and Mature had made it roughly sixty steps down the drywall-and-plaster fakey steps before Shingo's voice carried down towards them: "Hey guys, wait up!"

"Oh my," Vice said, coyly, turning.

Shingo took the steps down three at a time and said, "Benimaru said you two were scoring every fighter based on how good he did in the tournie!"

"How _well_ he did, Yabuki," Mature replied, coolly. "Some grammar you have."

"Whatever," Shingo said, breathless. "I figured, since I couldn't, like, remember how good I did, maybe you could tell me what you scored me?"

"Couldn't recall," Vice said, smiling, her thin lips pursed together like two worms. "We had to grade the third fight, remember?"

"Oh, yeah!" Shingo said. "Who won?"

"Don't you check the scoreboard?" Vice asked.

"They don't say, like, every fighter's score, though," Shingo said. "So, no,

didn't bother."

"That's a shame," Mature said, smiling.

Vice giggled and stuck his cigarette holder between her purple lips.

Shingo glanced at both of them and went pallid. "Aw, c'mon gals!" he said. "Be sisters to me, huh? Ash conked me on the damn noggin, so I'm out of it. Who won?"

Vice took a drag from her cigarette and said, "The **Joe Higashi****Unplugged** team fought the **Outlaw Plus One **team and won. It was pretty sweet."

"Spectacular, even," Mature said. "Now, if you'll excuse us, we have to go do some paperwork back at the hotel. Unlike you layabouts, we actually have to do work. Go check out the activities. There's bobbing for apples down by the pier."

"That's shit's boring," Shingo muttered. "Only reason to go do that stuff is to pick up chicks and all the chicks around here are nuts as all get out. You know that Leona Heidern girl?"

"Oh God," Vice said.

"What?" Shingo replied.

"You didn't… you didn't try to pick her up, did you?"

"What? _No_. I'm just saying – I bet she'd kick my ass if I tried."

"Damn straight."

"I'm just saying all the women around here are too damn hard to get."

Mature burst out laughing.

"Oh I don't know about that, Yabuki," Vice said, chewing on the end of her cigarette holder. "There's plenty of women here who'd leap at a chance to get the Shingo experience."

"Angel," Mature said.

"Malin, if she's drunk enough," Vice said. "Or sometimes even when she's not."

"Yuri Sakazaki is supposed to have a weak spot for muscular wiry martial artists."

"You going to the Maxmillion Ball tonight? Lots of young, nubile women there? And they're all _hardbodied pugilists_, so imagine how they'll be in the sack!"

Shingo flushed. "Well, you don't have to make fun of me," he said. "Yeesh, I open up an insecurity to you two and you tease me for all I'm worth."

Mature laughed.

"So long, lover," Vice said, and turned to go.

"Wait!" Shingo said, running after them. "You guys got the scores back at the hotel?"

"We have all the paperwork in the hotel," Mature replied.

"Can I come with you guys and get a look at my score?"

"Free country, ain't it?" Vice asked, and blew a cloud of smoke in his face. "Sure, Yabuki, come and get your scores."

Grinning, he trotted along after them.

---------------------------------------

A/N : Edited because of what Numa Numa Insanity pointed out. She or he is right - not only can it be construed as offensive, but as I thought about it, that simile just isn't good writing, so I changed it.


	6. Chapter 6

The hotel should've been empty. Even if everyone hadn't bothered with the Couples' Games and their respective humiliations, or if no one had gone to the concert down on the south side of the lake, no KoF champion in their right mind would've spent their day lying in their hotel rooms. They were all out and about, wandering the compound, or meditating, or training for their upcoming match. Hell, some of them had probably left the compound and caught a taxi back into the city.

This explained Vice's surprise when Shingo, Mature and she went into the hotel lobby and found Seth, Ramon and Vanessa up by the registrar's desk attempting to break into the hotel safe.

Ramon and Vanessa stood at either end of the desk, holding sub-machine guns. Ramon was staring into one of the painted walls; he was fascinated by the image of the pastoral fields, especially of a depiction of what appeared to be Persephone bitten by the snake.

Vanessa was a bit more in touch with her job: she saw the newcomers step through the door and aimed the gun.

Vice and Mature would later chuckle at the fact that the first thing they thought on seeing the gun was, _Oh, a UMP_.

Such had been their training.

Vanessa was stressed and nervous: Vice could see it all over her. Her red hair was clumped with sweat, her mouth was parted slightly, her eyes were wild and her hands were shaking.

Without warning, the UMP roared, a guttural thunder wracking the room. The stain glass windows shattered behind Vice as she ducked and rolled to the side. Mature went _up_ as the spray came down beneath her, and she drew her dress up to shield her legs from the floor bucking, shrapnel zizzing around them. Shingo cartwheeled to the side, ducking the spray crossing up and over the second stained-glass window.

Seth reached out and gently touched Vanessa's shoulder. The UMP quit its report, and Vanessa stood there, shaking.

From behind the nervous Vanessa, the tall Seth peered out, watching the three get to their feet. Vice gingerly picked her way through the glass and matched Seth's stare. Seth himself was a sketch in charcoal: his shoes were gray, his suit was gray, his gloves were gray, his tie was gray, his hat was gray.

He stared her down and said, in his purring bass, "Reload."

"What for?" Vanessa asked, regaining some of her composure. "_They're_ not the threat."

"Reload," Seth said, again, and turned to continue his work on the safe – applying a thick corrosive compound to the frame.

"You shot at us!" Shingo screamed, brushing the glass off him.

"Seth," Vice said. "That's private property you're tampering with there."

Again, in his deep, rumbling purr, Seth said, "If they come any closer, shoot them."

Vanessa was no longer nervous. She reloaded the UMP with a mechanical precision and kept it trained on them. So did Ramon.

"What exactly do you want from the safe?" Mature asked. "Can't think why the hotel safe would have any valuable documents."

Seth didn't reply.

"Seth!" Vice snapped. "In three seconds, we're gonna charge your ass, and no amount of gun-slinging is going to stop me from plowing my feet through your face!"

Seth stopped his work. Slowly, he set the corrosive acid aside and stood up, brushing his suit. He turned around and came about the desk and stood beside Vanessa.

He locked eyes with Vice. He stared at her, a panther's stare. "Go ahead," he rumbled.

Vice tensed.

The door banged open, and Iori Yagami walked in, carrying his bag slung over his shirt. "-well," he was saying. "It was _your_ fault that the toll booth operator called the damn _police_ on us!"

"_My_ fault?" King asked, barging in after him. "How was that _my_ fault? I- I didn't do anything to-! Mai, it wasn't my fault, was it?"

"He _did_ think you were trying to rob him," Mai said, stumbling in. She looked absolutely exhausted. "What was it you said again?"

"'If you say that one more time'," Iori quoted. "'I'm going to burst out of this car, smash through your pathetic balsa wood station and _then_ I'll have all the damn quarters in the world'. Hi, Shingo."

"Er, hi," Shingo said.

"I didn't _mean_ to make it sound like I was actually going to _do_ it!" King snapped. "He was just a pathetic idiot. And, great, Ryo isn't here to meet us like he _said_ he would."

Iori shouldered his way past Vanessa and Ramon and Seth and set his bag on the registrar's desk. He rang the bell.

Andy Bogard slowly stumbled through the door, burdened by six or seven duffel bags.

"All right, dear?" Mai asked. "You didn't _have_ to bring in all the luggage, you know."

"No, no," Andy wheezed. "I can handle it."

"You don't have to get all macho on my account, Bogard."

"No, no. puff I- I can handle it."

"Looks like they're doing some renovating," King said, picking her way over the broken glass.

"Doesn't this place have any service?" Iori bellowed.

Vice and Mature exchanged glances. They pushed their way past Seth, Vanessa and Ramon and came behind the desk.

"Hi, Yagami," Vice said, smiling. "You're late."

"Don't even talk to me about that," Iori said, darkly. "Don't even."

"Well, your team is already signed on, darling," Mature said. "You can go ahead and grab your keys."

Seth made an unseen gesture, and Vanessa, Ramon and he left the hotel.

"I'm dead tired," King said, grabbing her key. "See you guys _later_."

"Ditto," Mai said, grabbing hers. "Come on, dear."

Andy struggled to follow her into the elevator. "What are _in_ these?" he breathed. "_Rocks_?"

"You don't _have_ to-"

"No, no. I can handle it."

Iori watched the elevator door close, and then turned back to say, "Listen, you two, um, I was wondering-"

"My room tonight?" Vice asked, coyly. "I'll be on the bottom? I don't feel in the mood to do any work."

"Flirt," Iori said. "No, listen, I was wondering if I could, um, I don't know, buy you two a drink sometime."

"Why, Iori Yagami," Mature said, smiling. "Whatever for?"

"Well, because-"

He stood up, and looked away, and ran his hand through his hair and brushed down his shirt. He swallowed. "I-" he said. "Listen, I know I can't do anything to ever _really_ make up for murdering you two. I mean, I _killed_ you. Brutally. And, well, I know I can't ever make up for it, but I want to apologize."

"_Oh ho_!" Mature said, laughing. "The old Iori Yagami apology. Buying someone a drink."

"Well, I don't know!" Iori snapped. "What can I do? I mean, it's a start, right?"

"You know, Yagami," Vice said, pulling a cigarette from the desk drawers. "In the past ten years, you've just become more and more human. You realize that?"

"Pft," Iori replied. He shrugged. "I yem what I yem. Do you guys want the drink or not?"

"Tonight," Mature said. "At the Maxmillion Ball."

"What's that?"

"It's like a masquerade ball, only with Mister Beauregard's name in front of it."

Iori laughed. "Yeah," he said. "Well, maybe."

He grabbed the keys and went up to the elevator.

When he had gone, Vice and Mature glanced back at Shingo, then glanced at the tools Seth had left behind.

"Huh," Vice said.


	7. Chapter 7

Lightning flashed, and lit up the small office where Vice stood in the nude, appraising her body in the mirror. It was a habit that she'd gotten into ever since Goenitz had resurrected her; a pathological urge to check that she was still alive and well. It was a good body, voluptuous and muscular, suited for cleavage and running and kicking.

She liked the way in looked in the dark; where the moonlight was the only light in the office, casting dark blue shadows over the desk, the carpet, and the chair.

"You're not fooling anyone, you know," she said.

The knife shot from the desk out of the shadows towards her. She ducked it, and the mirror shattered, glittering glass spiraling through the air. She sprang upwards and landed on her desk, growling like a cat, her eyes shining in the moonlight. "Shitty," she hissed. "You're not very silent at all."

"Cover yourself," a deep, monotone voice echoed out of the shadows. "I thought you were someone else, so I attacked. Cover yourself."

"Afraid of the female form?" she asked, her thin lips pressing up into a smile. She sat on the desk and crossed her legs, and liked the way she felt, naked and stared at by a stranger. Not quite a stranger. "Come into the light, Kisaragi."

"Won't," the ninja replied. "The Agents tried to break into the hotel safe today. You were there. They wanted certain files and information. You have access to that safe."

"That's true," Vice replied, opening her desk drawer and taking out a cigarette and her cigarette holder. "You wouldn't have a light, would you?"

"Hold the cigarette up."

She did. A spark ignited in the air and the air smelled of sulphur. The edges of the cigarette blackened and lit. She smiled and thanked him and took a drag from it. "Why didn't you sign up for the tournament, Kisaragi?" she asked.

"Not time," the silhouette in the shadows replied. "I won't have my vengeance until the next King of Fighters tournament. Not before, not after."

"So what did the Agents want?"

"I don't feel the need to discuss it with a woman. Give me the key to the safe or I'll kill you. That's the deal."

"It doesn't have a key. It's a whatchamacallit, the kind you twist."

"Combination," Eiji said. "Give me the combination."

"Or you'll kill me?"

"Yes."

Vice said nothing, only continued to breathe smoke.

Eiji moved only slightly in the dark, and his eyes could be seen for a moment, two dark orbs.

"Going to the masquerade, Kisaragi?" she asked. She widened her grin, and showed her teeth. "You wouldn't even need a costume, you'd-"

Even though she was expecting it, Kisaragi was still faster than she'd have liked: he shoved her back onto the desk and straddled her, his gloved hands on her throat, pressing. He didn't mean to kill her; she knew – he was to scare her, make her reveal the combination. That gave her time.

The small needle blade popped out of the end of her cigarette holder and flashed once, and Kisaragi flew off of her as if hit by a brick. He stumbled over the carpet, the cigarette holder sticking out of his cheek.

She kicked him through the window and he fell back in a torrent of glass shards and sprawled on the balcony.

She stood over him, enjoying the wind on her bare skin. "Do you even know anything?" she asked. "Or are you just following up on a 'lead'?"

He pulled the cigarette holder from his cheek and said nothing; only bled.

She stepped over towards him, letting the glass cut into the bottom of her feet. She knelt over him and said, "What do you do, Kisaragi; ten years of loneliness?"

Eiji's eyes turned to fear, and they were huge, staring at her.

Vice's eyes flashed, and her grin returned to her face. She reached up to his mask and touched it. He knocked away her hands and looked away.

"Fine," she said, still smiling.

"The Orochi," Eiji replied. "It's information regarding the Orochi."

"What information?"

"I don't know. I was going to steal it and find out."

"Why would it be in the safe?"

"I don't know."

It started to rain. Lightning flashed again.

The door to the office opened, bright yellow light spreading in. Eiji shoved Vice off of him and threw himself over the balcony, disappearing into the darkness.

Vice lay on the balcony, letting the broken glass bite into her, savouring the pain.

"Vice?" Mature said. "Jesus, Vice, what the hell happened?"

"Nothing," Vice said, getting to her feet. "Want to help me into my costume?"

"Sure," Mature said. "You get the costume out, I'll get the Goddamn peroxide. Silly girl."

Vice grinned.

----------------

Terry Bogard was rarely fond of Benimaru Nikaido, and doubly so when the latter was drunk. Terry had had a lot of time to mull over this fact because when Benimaru was drunk, he always seemed to talk to Terry if Kyo was off with Yuki.

"It's difficult," Benimaru was saying, sitting in the chair backwards, his legs sprawling around the arm rests. "to be so beautiful as I am. It really is. Some people think beautiful people have all the luck. They _don't_, Terry. They don't."

Terry looked at Benimaru's outrageous jester costume, an explosion of checkered colour and jingling bells. It was certainly taking more attention away from Terry's own costume: the armour of a knight-at-arms. Benimaru's ridiculous costume blended far more in with the ballroom's décor: its sloping red walls and golden trim.

"I'm just saying she's _trouble_, Nikaido," Terry replied.

"Beautiful people have to stick together," Benimaru replied. "Beauty-"

"A sober Benimaru Nikaido wouldn't even be _considering_ this, I hope you realize."

"I am _not_ drunk, dammit! How- how dare-? God, it's only eleven o'clock and I'm drunk, aren't I?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe that's just how I roll. Has _nothing_ to do with me scoring that beauty over-"

"Maybe it's a good idea, Benimaru," Mary said, coming over and sitting down at the table beside them. She looked beautiful: she had dressed to match Terry's costume, so of course she appeared as la dame sans merci. "You may just take Angel's mind off of me."

She looked across the ballroom, across the dancers, towards the object of Benimaru's lust: Angel.

The NESTs agent showed more skin than usual: she was a catgirl, but a couple plush ears and a plush tail decided to compliment an orange micro bikini. As a result, there was a lot of Angel to admire. She crossed her legs and laughed at a joke K9999 said.

"She'll eat you up and spit you out, Nikaido," Terry said.

"Or vice-versa!" Benimaru exclaimed. "Don't forget who you're _talking_ to, Terry!"

"Well, go ahead," Terry said, turning back to face Mary. "Trust me on this : After she's done with you you'll look like you've been thrown through a thorn bush. You'll be her pin-cushion."

Mary touched Terry's hands, and Terry caught her eye. She smiled coyly.

"What?" Terry asked.

"Nothing," she replied. "I'm enjoying this. We- you know, we so rarely get to do something so normal like just spending time together at a dance."

"It's not going to last," Terry said. "Any moment something's going to happen an we'll be whisked away onto separate adventures."

Mary took one hand off Terry's and knocked three times on the table. At the third time a huge _bang_ rattled the table, as Joe Higashi sat down opposite them.

"Hi guys!" he cried. "What's Benimaru doing here?"

Mary blinked. "Joe, you idiot, you're suppose to be in _costume_. What's with the tuxedo?"

"Ah," said a voice. "Mary, you look absolutely beautiful today."

Ash Crimson approached the table, dressed in eighteenth century costume: a wide-brimmed floppy feathered hat, jerkin, breeches, boots, cape and mask. "So," he said. "If you're _la dame sans merci_, zen, Terry Bogard, are you ze knight-at-arms or are you ze wretched wight?"

"Crimson," Terry said. "See if you can talk Benimaru out of trying to pick up Angel."

Ash hunched over and chucked. "I would never presume to step on Nikaido's toes," he replied. "I wish him best of luck, and zink he should be in her bed _a deux temp_s."

"There," Benimaru said, smirking. "See? _Confidence_."


	8. Chapter 8

The limo slid up to the hotel, its lights flashing across the balcony where Mai stood. She blinked, temporarily blinded, and moved out of the range of the headlights until it could park.

The limo driver appeared, a very short silhouette in a chauffeur's uniform. He moved to the door, opened it and let out a very tall silhouette.

Mai watched them calmly, a glass of wine in her hand. She moved the glass to her lips to sip, as the tall silhouette moved into the hotel lights.

The wine went spitting out into the bushes beyond the balcony.

"What the fuck?" Mai said, staring. "Krizalid?!"

Krizalid turned, his ridiculous fur coat making him look perfect for an arrival to a masquerade ball. He smiled at her and said, "How is the party so far, Shiranui? That is a lovely costume you're wearing there? What are you supposed to be?"

"An angel," Mai said, in a low controlled voice. "See the wings?"

"That's part of the costume?" he asked in a loud voice. "Why, I just thought you were _made in heaven!_"

Mai had no response to that.

As Krizalid disappeared through the doors, the short chauffeur stepped lightly around the car back towards the front door. There was something oddly familiar about the thin little figure's gait...

"Isn't Krizalid supposed to be dead?" Iori said, appearing beside her, dressed in no costume whatsoever.

She stared at him. "Did we forget the definition of a masquerade ball?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Whoops."

"I guess you already look clownish enough, huh?"

He peered out at the limo. "I _know_ that walk. The straight posture, the boy-band little steps--"

"There are too many dead people at this party," Mai said.

She sprang forward, her left foot bouncing off the rail of the balcony, and she hurtled over the parking lot, landing beside the limo.

The chauffeur, his face shadowed by the hat, turned to look at her.

"You're supposed to be deceased, little man," she said.

"Rumours of my death and all that," the chauffeur replied. He flicked his hand and a cigarette appeared. He lit it and in the flames of the lighter, large childish eyes stared back at her.

"Well, _I'm_ not impressed," Iori's voice came from the shadows. "You weren't anything but a younger, hipper version of Kyo."

"It's tremendously unfortunate," the chauffeur said, "but I think my trendy days are over -- I'm forced to wear this all-black ensemble every day."

"Bit of an improvement over your purple shirt, there, buckaroo," Mai said. "Now tell me why you're here... Chris."

In the light of the cigarette, Chris's lips spread open into a smile. "You may not have noticed," he said, "but a big evil genetically enhanced clone just walked into the hotel."

"Krizalid. I saw him."

"And _white _pants?" Iori said. "What the fuck?"

"_Iori_," Mai snapped. "For god's sake, your _pants_ _are tied together!_"

"At least I can colour coordinate."

"Right," Mai said, running a hand through her hair. "Right. So. Krizalid is back, and he's here, and _you're_ back and, for some reason, here. Why, exactly?"

"Oh gee, sure, Mai," Chris said, "let me just spill all my secrets to you. Jesus. And my shirt was _blue._ God."

He flicked the cigarette into the bushes and climbed into the limo and drove off.

"Little shit," Iori said.

"Kyo!" Krizalid shouted merrily, slapping Kyo on the back. "How _are_ you? Ha ha!"

Kyo stumbled forward, spilling his wine over the front of Yuki's dress. She gasped, stepped back, staring at the ruined fabric.

"And _you, _Mary!" Krizalid continued, punching Mary in the arm. "Looking gorgeous as ever!"

"Jesus fuck," Kyo said.

The dancing had stopped; almost everyone was staring at Krizalid, as he wandered towards the stage and the musicians.

"What the hell is he _doing_ here?" Terry asked.

Krizalid walked up onto the stage, passing Vice and Mature, who watched him, mouths hanging open.

"Oh, wow," Krizalid said, taking the mic from the stage and speaking into it, his voice flying over the crowd. "Look at you all. I know some of you better than others, I guess. Some of you killed me, remember? Ha ha! _Man_, good times, good times."

Silence, except for the musicians, who kept on playing.

"Oh," he said, leaning in. "In forty-eight hours from now, you'll all be dead. Right! Enjoy your dancing!"

With that, he stepped off the stage and disappeared through a side door.

Every one turned and stared at each other.

"Jesus fuck," Kyo said again.

---

"Krizalid."

Krizalid sat in the hotel lobby, legs crossed. He looked up at Mature, smiling. "Yers?"

"That was, uh, an interesting little announcement there."

"Wasn't it, though?"

"Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Aren't you?"

"Care to elaborate on the whole forty-eight hours dead thing?"

"Not particularly?"

"What if myself and some interested parties threaten to kick your ass?"

"You can _certainly_ try. By the way, I'd like to take a room."

"Rooms are only for registered teams."

"I'd like to register a team then."

Mature blinked. She turned about and walked up the stairs and around the counter. "Right," she said. "Team name?"

Krizalid stood, very slowly, and smiled. "Let's call them the **Nightmare** team."

"Righto. And where are they?"

"They're coming."

"Forty-eight hours?"

"Ohhh, much less than that, Mature, much less than that."

"Right, and they're going to kill us all?"

"Down to every last man, woman and child-"

It happened so fast; Mature watched Krizalid fly up through the ceiling, and then through it, bits of drywall fluttering down from the hole.

"Damages, damages," Mature muttered, writing down a note.

Krizalid crashed into the night air, falling along the balcony floor, choking, grasping at the bit of leather around his neck.

"Oh, Krizalid," Whip said, yanking him towards her. "What fools we mortals be."

A blue light flashed and the whip snapped in half, flying back towards her. Krizalid stumbled back, choking and coughing.

"What are you doing here?" Whip said, walking towards him.

"How about-" he said, coughing. "How about I answer that question with an ass-kicking?"

He launched himself towards her and find himself confronted with the massive figure of Seth, who swirled down in a long elegant coat and hurled Krizalid over the edge of the balcony.

Whip watched the godling fall and crashed onto the roof of a parked car. The wind flew up, fluttered her hair. "Who knew _he'd_ come into this?"

But Seth was gone, already rushing back into the hotel.

"So much trouble," Whip said, gathering the leather whip back to her, "for such a small thing."

And then Benimaru fell across the doorframe, slammed into the door by Angel, who ran her nails down his back, leaving red trails, and plunged her tongue into his mouth. He tried to flail and get away, but she pursued, and they both fell out of sight.


	9. Chapter 9

And, perched elegantly on the side of the balcony, Whip coiled back her weapon, ran gloved fingers through her hair and said, "My, my, my."

Outside in the parking lot, Krizalid was picking himself up from the street. "Right," he said, steadying himself. "Right."

Seth pushed beyond the limo, palmed back his mohawk and said, deeply, "Get out of here."

"You're dead," Krizalid said, wagging a finger at Seth. "You're, heh, very, very dead."

"Right," Seth said, knocking Krizalid in the jaw, sending him back against the door of a yellow Camri. The car alarm went off and buzzing signals roared around Krizalid, who flashed into silhouette with the blinking of the lights, out of silhouette, and back into silhouette.

"What are you doing here?" Seth growled.

"You," Krizalid said, getting back up, "are _dead_ meat."

Seth's boot struck Krizalid in the chest and _crumple_ went both of the Camri's doors -- yellow metal twisted away in the air as Krizalid shot through the car and rolled along the pavement.

Seth leapt onto the top of the car and watched Krizalid scramble to his feet.

"Goodness me, Seth," Krizalid said, coughing. "Aren't we all being a bit hasty?"

_Snap_. A gout of flames engulfed the car, enveloping Seth. The pillar of flame shot up towards the sky and the car burst into pieces, spinning up along its path in the fire.

Seth hit the ground in front of Krizalid, his suit barely singed. There was a flash of light as the flaming car struck Krizalid's limo, and the car alarm went off, drowning the parking lot in white luminance.

As the lot flew back into darkness, Whip could see Krizalid fly back, blood flowing from his nose. The limo's lights went up again, _whump_, and she was too blinded to see Krizalid hit the wall.

"Now then," Seth said, a human-sized pit of darkness in all the light. "Let's talk about _why_ you're _here_."

He grabbed Krizalid by the collar and yanked him up, growling.

"To win..." Krizalid coughed up blood. "The money."

One of Seth's perfectly tweezed eyebrows went up. "That's it?"

"Got me... a team... and everything."

_Whoom_. As the limo's lights died back down, the flame of a lighter shot up, and the end of a cigarette burst into crimson. "That's a _real_ good question, chief."

Vice, as the dark fairy, sitting on the steps of the hotel, smoking a cigarette, one leg strategically showing a lot of thigh. "A _real _good question."

"It's... a good team," Krizalid said, blood covering his nose.

"What sort of question?" Seth asked, not taking his eyes off his victim.

"Why are _you_ here, Seth?" Vice asked.

Seth hurled Krizalid towards the limo, where it promptly gave up trying to alarm everyone and died down. He turned on Vice and dusted off his suit. "And I'd _tell_ you, Miss Vice? One of the hotel staff? In the very clutches of her grip?"

The cigarette fell out of Vice's lips. "Whose grip?"

"Uh huh."

Vice stood up. "Wait, who are we talking about here?"

Seth squared his shoulders and glanced back at Krizalid's limp form. "Well," he said. "Nice party, Miss Vice."

"Don't you _dare_ move, buddy!" Vice snapped, "Or I'll snap your neck with my heel!"

Seth glanced down at Vice's stilettos. He raised his hands, palms out. "You may certainly try."

He turned around and began walking off into the darkness. "Give Shermie my love."

And as he vanished into the night, Vice could only think, _Shermie? What the fuck?_

Very quietly, Krizalid began to groan.

XXXX

Terry paused, his hand in Mary's, staring at the mass of rubble lying over the ground and the two naked bodies entangled together on the carpet.

"Right through the broom closet wall," Mary said. "Why don't we make love like that, Terry?"

"We don't have insurance, that's why," Terry said. "You all right, Benimaru?"

"Oh, I'm _sure_ I will be," Benimaru said, "soon as feeling comes back to me."

Angel wrapped her legs around him and cooed.

XXXX

The next morning came bright and early. Vice sat nearby in a chair, drumming her fingers on the desk in her room. She was distressed -- first of all, what the hell did Seth mean by his reference to Shermie? Second of all, she'd been at a party and did not get laid, which was not her idea of a good party. She hadn't even kissed anyone.

Shermie... it made sense, to some degree. She, like Vice, like Mature, like Goenitz, were all still very alive, thanks to that machine.

"Mature," Vice called. "Do you think we should pay a visit to--"

The whip crashed straight through the window, wrapped around her neck and yanked her out through the broken grass. She crashed along the grass, through the bushes and slid along up to two womanly boots. Although the sun was behind the figure, she could tell by that uniform and that hair that Whip was certainly going to get her ass kicked today.

Vice leapt up, spun around to drive her foot into Whip's face. Whip twisted her wrist, and Vice face-planted into the ground.

That was a lie. It seemed that someone, during the night, had replaced the soil with mud. Vice sputtered and gasped for hair, getting the filth _all over her dress_.

"Aw, poor baby," Whip said.

"_Whip, what the hell are you-?_"

Whip reached down and used her palm to drive Vice's face into the mud. There was an audible click and the cold weight of a Desert Eagle placed against the back of Vice's head. Vice decided to stay relatively still.

"Vice, can you hear me?" Whip said. "Nod if you can."

Vice nodded, trying to hold her breath.

"I'm going to shoot you in the back of the head and leave you here," Whip said, "unless you answer my questions. Now. I'm going to let go of you. Can you be quiet and answer my questions without me having to shoot you?"

Vice hesitated, and then nodded.

"All right then."

Whip let go of Vice's head, and Vice lifted her face from the cold mud, which ran down her face, blinding her, getting in her nose, getting in her mouth.

"What's in the safe?" Whip asked.

"Uh. Hotel documents. Like. Team rosters. Shit."

"Anything else?"

"Nooot that I know of."

"You know, if I think you're lying, I'm going to put a hole through your left eye."

"That would suck, because I, ha ha ha, I _ain't _ gonna lie, let me tell you."

Vice had a hatpin the size of a frigging sword lodged in her garter belt. Could she reach it in time?

Then again, Whip had reflexes like the best of them. Best Vice could hope for would be a draw, and one of those would result in a hat pin in Whip's face, and Vice's brains spilled everywhere.

"Why did Shermie hire you?" Whip asked.

"Goenitz hired us."

"You've been _spying_ on me."

"Well, yes, I guess we did a bit."

"What'd you tell Goenitz?"

"About _you?_ Jesus, a bunch of stuff."

"Anything important?"

"_Yes_, Whip, we were watching your every movements. Every single fucking little thing you did went to Goenitz. Think of the most important secret you revealed in your little private times. He knows it."

"So why shouldn't I shoot you?"

"Uh."

"Can you come up with a reason for why I shouldn't?"

"I'm so _sexy_."

"I don't think I go for the women."

"Well, you don't _haaaave_ to. There's an objective basis for these things."

"I bet."

"Aw, _c'mon_, Whip. BFF?"

Whip grabbed the back of Vice's head and slapped it back down into the mud. She leaned in close and hissed, "You tell Shermie that _I'll_ steal the secret before her, before Seth, before _everyone_."

Then, suddenly, Whip was gone. Vice sat up, and wiped the mud off her face and looked around.

Just bright sunlight and greenery.

"Oh," Vice said. "Oh, what the fuck."


	10. Chapter 10

Mature reached over the table and picked up the scone, turning it over in the sunlight. She took it back through the dappled green light from the palms above and brought it to her lips.

The scone paused, frozen in time, Mature's eyes on Vice, who came down the steps to the patio and stood in front of her table.

"My goodness, darling," Mature said. "What happened to you?"

Vice was absolutely drenched in mud. It covered her face, dribbled off her dress, was all over her hair. She said, "I slipped."

"You should be more careful in the future." Mature indicated the woman sitting next to her at the table. "This is Elizabeth Blanctorche."

A Parisian accent, light and lilting: "Hello."

Vice smirked and sat down at a free chair, soaking it with mud. "Charmed."

"Miss Blanctorche is here to check up on how the tournament is going," Mature said.

Blanctorche's eyes twinkled. "Amongst other things," she said.

Above, along the sidewalk trailing underneath the hotel gables, Ash Crimson strode by. Blanctorche's eyes followed him until he vanished behind the greenery.

"There seems to be a great deal of, hm, _curiosity_ about your safe in the hotel, yes?" she said softly.

"Pft," Vice said. "Where'd you hear that?"

"Hm, little birds. In the trees."

"Maybe I should find these birds and wring their necks apart."

"Vice," Mature said. "Why don't you go have a shower?"

"Mature, why don't you go stick that scone up your ass?"

Mature's smile intensified briefly, and stiffened. "Something bothering you, darling?"

"Oh, geez, me, nothing." Vice picked up a fork. "Jesus, is this fucker silver?"

"I think so."

"What exactly is in this safe?" Blanctorche asked.

"Nothing too valuable, far as we can tell," Mature said. "Documents. Receipts. Why the Agents are trying their best to tear it open is beyond me-- I've been through that safe a couple times and--"

"It was a custom built safe, Maxmillion said once," Blanctorche said. "Maybe there is more too it than, hm, meets the eye, perhaps?"

"Wonderful theory, wonderful," Vice said, wiping a bunch of mud off her eyes and dumping it onto the tablecloth. "_This_ knife -- this knife silver too?"

"Maxmillion doesn't skimp, love," Mature said.

"That's just _fabulous_," Vice said, palming both the fork and the knife. "I'll see you two bitches later."

Seconds afterwards, she danced along the sidewalk down towards the satellite buildings, passing underneath trees, cruising past the gardens.

And there was Shingo, standing there, talking with Athena. Vice asked him sweetly if had seen Whip anywhere and Shingo said that he had and that she was down in the cafeteria next to the Coliseum.

Emerging through the doors of the cafeteria, Vice passed through a crowd of people and saw Whip standing in the line, a tray on the rails, the cafeteria server dumping a scoop of mashed potatoes into a small grey bowl.

Vice leapt up onto a table, fork in the air, the florescent lights gleaming off the surface. Whip saw her in the reflection of the glass and turned, drawing the Desert Eagle.

_Thunk_. The fork lodged in the barrel of the gun. Whip dropped it and leapt onto another table. Her whip unfurling.

Too late: Vice was in the air, launching a kick at Whip's head that should've broken her neck. Instead, Whip took the blow on her forearms, the impact throwing her against the glass of the cafeteria and up over it into the kitchen.

_Clink._ Benimaru set down a glass of fruit punch onto the table and cricked his neck. "Good God," he said to Kyo, who sat across from him. "You know, you know, buddy, I _still_ can't believe those breasts were real."

Vice hit the table, shattering the glass of fruit punch, the whip constricting her neck. She grabbed the whip and yanked it and slammed both feet into Whip as she flew towards her.

"Well, that's the _thing_," May Lee was trying to explain to Kim Kaphwan. "You need a good ritual, a good routine. You can't perform respectable martial arts without at least _some_ hand movements, some shouting."

Whip's boots skidded across their table; Whip took Vice's punch off the shoulder, grabbed Vice's neck and brought her knee into Vice's face.

"I can't eat this food," Joe Hisashi said, pushing the tray back. "This is the kind of stuff they serve balls-out fighters like us? We should be getting nothing but steak and salted pork, the stuff they expect us to do! They should be throwing nubile young women at us!"

"Don't you have a girlfriend?" Mary asked.

"It's a _status_ thing," Joe tried to explain.

Whip's body actually _broke_ the table, and Vice was there a second later, driving her foot a good foot into the concrete floor. Whip was too _fast_; she was in the air, above Whip, her military knife leaping into her hands. Vice grabbed Joe's tray out of the air and hurled it at Whip, catching the woman in the mouth.

Together they crashed through a window out into the brook outside.

"Huh," Terry said, staring at the broken table.

XXXX

"You'll have to excuse her," Mature said to Blanctorche as she took a bite of her scone. "It's her liveliness. She's very lively."

"It's very obvious," Blanctorche said.

XXXX

Around and around, the rushing current of the river throw Vice out and up and back against Whip. Whip got a good left hook in and Vice saw red spots and felt blood coming out of her lip, which had swollen to the size of a bus. Vice had Whip in a head lock and was elbowing her in the face again and again when a wave threw them up into the air onto a large boulder.

Whip spun, catching Vice across the neck with her knife, only grazing her.

"Oh good _God_," Vice said, stumbling back, holding her neck. "_Watch_ that thing. You could've gotten my _face!_"

"Who knows?" Whip said. "It could've been an improvement."

"Do you two ladies need a hand?"

They turned towards the voice. Vice blinked, wondering if all the blows to her head had taken their toll. There he was, plain as day.

Rugal fucking Bernstein.

There was a housecat, a small tabby, curled around his left pantleg. Rugal smiled brightly and reached out for them, offering his hand.

"Mr. Bernstein?" Vice asked, wondering if she should fall back into the role of secretary.

"Isn't he _great?_" an excited voice said. Krizalid appeared on the ridge, running towards them. He clutched Rugal around the shoulders and grinned. "I found him in the wreckage of some NESTS factory in Germany. Look at him. Doesn't he look just _fabulous?_"

"It's Rugal," Vice said. "Isn't Rugal dead?"

Well yeah, she thought; and you're supposed to be dead too. We're all supposed to be dead.

"Weeell," Krizalid said.

"I'm here to help in any way, shape or form," Rugal said.

"Rugal Bernstein is dead (supposedly), yes," Krizalid said, scratching his head. "And then Omega Rugal was destroyed (supposedly), too. This guy, I think, is only Beta Rugal. But, you know, he's still good, in his own way."

"A saved cracker is a blow against waste," Rugal said.

Holy Jesus, Vice thought. "This is your **Nightmare Team?**"

"Well, not _all_ of them, you pisser," Krizalid said. "Mukai'll be along--"

"_Mukai?_"

"Mukai."

Behind Vice, Whip blinked and said, "Mukai. _The_ Mukai. The mysterious godling connected to the Orochi bloodline and the Sacred Treasures."

"_Oooh_," Krizalid said. "Aren't _we_ all afraid of the great and powerful **Nightmare Team!**"

"I think dubious is probably a better word."

The sky grew darker for a moment, and a chill crept on Vice's heart. From behind Krizalid a godling appeared, a towering man of stone skin with eyes like stars, and a scars that glowed with interior embers. He radiated power. He radiated death.

"_Mukai_," Vice said. "It _is_ you."

"So I am known among you," Mukai boomed. "Tremble then, woman. And you, the woman-known-as-Whip, tremble also."

"How the heck did you get stuck with a loser like Krizalid?"

Mukai shifted, uncomfortable. "I." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I lost a bet."

"Shion'll be along too, I hope," Krizalid said, looking at his watch. "Then we'll have some fun, won't we, Rugal?"

"On father's day," Rugal said, "be sure to get your dear old dad something he'll enjoy."

"Isn't he a _gas!_"


	11. Chapter 11

"Right."

Elizabeth Blanchtorche looked up at Mature, the light from the stained glass ceiling pouring down into the hotel lobby. "Ready, then?"

Mature dumped the bag of tools and equipment down beside the safe, kneeled and unlocked it, opening it up. Just as she suspected: a bunch of documents, piles of receipts. She got to her knees, twisted around and pushed her head into the dark metal interior. She touched the ceiling of the safe, touched the sides, knocked on them. "Okay, if there _is_ a hidden compartment in here, I'm not sure if it's supposed to be easily accessible."

"Need a tool?"

"Uh, not yet." She got out of the safe, and started taking documents out, piling them out and putting them onto the desk.

The front doors opened, and Mature turned, seeing the drenched Vice stagger up towards them. "Did you find her, darling?"

Vice sniffed. "Find who?" She paused, dripping onto the mosaic tiles. "What're you doing?"

"Tearing the safe apart," Elizabeth said.

"Oh, fun. Fun, fun. Nothing like spending a beautiful day finding some MacGuffin. I'm going to take a shower."

"You do that, dear," Mature said. "Shower's cheer everyone up. Okay, hand me that level."

Vice turned, and found, standing in the hall, the towering silhouette of Seth. Vice stepped back, surprised to see him. "What are _you_ doing here, then?"

Mature and Elizabeth turned.

"Don't mind me," Seth rumbled. "I'm just waiting."

"Waiting for what?" Mature said.

"That's _it_," Vice snapped. "Seth, you tell us what the hell is in that safe, or I'll take your head off with my stiletto heel!"

Seth cocked his head, regarding her quietly. "You really don't know," he said, a statement rather than a question. "Hum. Perhaps you'd best let our team handle that safe."

Mature looked away. "Don't you have a tournament to go to?"

"This afternoon. An afternoon where you two will have to judge, with leaves a lot of time for Whip and Chris to move in and take what they need."

"_That's _it," Vice said, turning and walking away from them. "I can't take this bustle and intrigue any more. Good_bye_."

"Vice, dear," Mature said, leaning across the desk. "You can't leave."

"Oh, can't I?"

"What would our dear old Goenitz say?"

"That he could go fuck himself."

"_Vice!_"

"See ya, Mature."

She almost made it to the door, when it opened insides, cracking against her head and knocking her onto her back. Krizalid stepped past her laughing. He was wearing -- good god, Vice thought -- he was wearing a lion fur cloak, the lion head still attached, the entire thing chalked _blue_.

"Now then," he said, "which room is ours?"

Mature straightened, standing behind the desk. "Ours?"

Through the door came Mukai, and Vice sucked in her breath.

"_**Yes**_," Mukai breathed, his every word reverberating through the room. "_**I hope our room has cable**_."

"This is your team?" Mature said.

"Almost," Krizalid said. "Almost all of them. This is, oh I'm sure you recall Mukai, and this is Beta Rugal, and this is Bao."

Bao smiled. "Hi!"

Mature stared. "Bao. From the Psycho Soldier team."

"This is gonna be a _great_ year," Bao said, "a _great _year for us all. Yep, I have a good feeling about this year. Feeling good about my teammates, feeling good about _myself_, yep I'm feeling good about us all."

"Uh."

"Dancing!" Bao clapped his hands, did a little dance in the spot. "Aw, year, this is gonna be _great_."

"Hold it, is that _Rugal_?"

"Beta Rugal," Krizalid said. "Shion ought to be coming along shortly."

"_Shion?_"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Aw, aw yay-ay," Bao said, dancing. "Wanna be my lover? Wanna be my lover?"

"_**Your hotel restaurant**_," Mukai boomed, worlds birthing and dying in his rumbling voice. "_**Is it an open bar?**_"

"Hold that thought," Mature said. "Krizalid, you said _Shion_ is joining you?"

"Haha, _yeah_. Hilarious, eh? Magaki, too."

"Magaki."

"Yes."

"The mysterious alien being of destructive power."

"_**Yes?**_"

"Wasn't talking about you, Mukai."

"_**Oh.**_"

"But, Magaki. _Magaki_ is joining your team."

Krizalid beamed. "Yes! We, er, we met over coffee the other day. Man has a great sense of fashion to him."

"That's too many people."

"What?"

"The teams are only allowed four to a team."

"Yeah, we'll switch out. Won't we guys?"

"Hell _yes_," Bao said. "I've got a great feeling about this one."

"Bao," Mature said, "_why_ are you on the **Nightmare** team?"

"Just, you know, I was trying to decide my team, and, well, I just had a great feeling about this one, you know, a _great_ feeling."

"Hey, hey guys," Krizalid said. "Whaddya -- whaddya guys doing with that safe, guys?"

"Cleaning it out," Mature said. "Your rooms are on 303, and 304."

"_**We're sharing rooms?**_" Mukai said. "_**That blows**_."

"Mukai, could you please not stand in one place for too long? Your intricate personal energy aura is ripping up bits of the mosaic."

"_**Oh. Sorry.**_"

"Trust me," Krizalid beamed. "By the time we start fighting, there won't be an arena left. That's how good we are."

Bao snapped to attention. "Aw, yeah, _motherfucker_."

XXXX

"Right, fine, I'm sick of this," Mature said, setting aside a drill. "This safe is impossible. No hidden keypads, no hollow spots, nothing."

"Perhaps--" Seth began, leaning over the desk. "Perhaps it's lodged in the metal itself."

"_What_ is-?" Vice said. "_What_ is lodged in the metal?"

Seth looked at her and then looked away. "Could you-"

"_No_," Vice said, grabbing him. "You tell us _now_."

"There are secrets," Seth said, removing her hands from his coat. "You are aware of the concept of secrets?"

"Of course we're aware," Mature said. "But you want our help, don't you? You can't get into the safe without our help, so you better-"

"Fine," Seth said. "It's-"

And that was when the energy blast blew through the front doors, incinerating the walls around them and destroying the lobby, throwing the four gathered there into the oblivions of fragmented wood and flame.

The floor buckled, which was what saved them. Vice hit a pipe, which broke, cold water shooting out into the basement, so that when she landed on the cold cement, water broke off the wall and crashed back into her. Heck, she thought; at least water's better than that inferno.

"Force field," she heard Seth say. "Now."

A green light appeared above them, as the rest of the lobby crashed down onto them.


End file.
